Chinua Achebe Quotes
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I have so many ideas; there are so many things that need to be done, so many possibilities, you know; one is terribly excited, but at the same time, you're almost confused, because you don't know where to begin.
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Privilege, you see, is one of the great adversaries of the imagination; it spreads a thick layer of adipose tissue over our sensitivity.
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The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.
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Unoka went into an inner room and soon returned with a small wooden disc containing a kola nut, some alligator pepper and a lump of white chalk. "I have kola," he announced when he sat down, and passed the disc over to his guest. "Thank you. He who brings kola brings life. But I think you ought to break it," replied Okoye passing back the disc. "No, it is for you, I think," and they argued like this for a few moments before Unoka accepted the honor of breaking the kola. Okoye, meanwhile, took the lump of chalk, drew some lines on the floor, and then painted his big toe.
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If you don't like someone's story, write your own. If you don't like what somebody says, say what it is you don't like.
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Anybody who wants to rule a group will find that if this group is quarreling among themselves they leave you alone.
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Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly for ever.
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Art should be on the side of humanity.
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Some people flinch when you talk about art in the context of the needs of society thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Why should art have a purpose and a use? Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But from the very beginning, it seems to me, stories have indeed been meant to be enjoyed, to appeal to that part of us which enjoys good form and good shape and good sound.
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Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.
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Women and music should not be dated.
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The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; it is this.
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The singer should sing well even if it is merely to himself, rather than dance badly for the whole world.
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The people you see in Nigeria today have always lived as neighbors in the same space for as long as we can remember. So it's a matter of settling down, lowering the rhetoric, the level of hostility in the rhetoric is too high.
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A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
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A child cannot pay for its mother’s milk.
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We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true.
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If you had been poor in your last life I would have asked you to be rich when you come again. But you were rich. If you had been a coward, I would have asked you to bring courage. But you were a fearless warrior. If you had died young, I would have asked you to get life. But you lived long. So I shall ask you to come again the way you came before.
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I'm very primitive; I write with a pen.
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Actually, I identify with all my characters, good and bad. I have to do that in order to make them genuine. I have to understand them even if I don't approve of them. Not completely - it's impossible; complete identification is, in fact, not desirable.
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Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache
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A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness
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After a war life catches desperately at passing hints of normalcy like vines entwining a hollow twig.
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When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
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As a rule I don't like suffering to no purpose. Suffering should be creative, should give birth to something good and lovely.
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An angry man is always a stupid man.
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The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.
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The ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres.
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We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: 'He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down.'
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It is not quite true to say that I am not an advocate of writing in African languages. What I think is, one has to think about what is practicable.
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